Stefan (Lost Nights Series Book 1)

Stefan

The Lost Nights Series

By Jocelynn Drake

Dedication

To all the readers who once hung out with me in the Dark Room.

Also by Jocelynn Drake

The Dark Days Series

Bound to Me

The Dead, the Damned and the Forgotten

Nightwalker

Dayhunter

Dawnbreaker

Pray for Dawn

Wait for Dusk

Burn the Night

The Asylum Tales

The Asylum Interviews: Bronx

The Asylum Interviews: Trixie

Angel’s Ink

Dead Man’s Deal

Demon’s Vengeance

The Unbreakable Bonds Series

Shiver

Shatter

Torch

Unbreakable Bonds Short Story Collection

Unbreakable Stories: Lucas

Chapter 1

Thunder rumbled and lightning flickered, darting behind thick clouds that rolled across the heavens, blocking out the stars. I glared up at the incoming storm, cursing it and my worsening luck as I waited for the ferry to dock. The apartment was still a couple blocks away and the sky was going to open up before I could reach sanctuary.

But that was just how my luck had been running recently. The flood waters had finally receded at the Piazza San Marco, but I hadn’t had any time to complete a single sketch because I was too busy trying to track down my damn landlord regarding the leaking ceiling and the lack of heat. The spring air was cool and the nights were dipping down close to freezing. I wanted to get through a night without wearing multiple layers of clothes.

The ferry driver scowled, anxious to have me off his boat. I was his last passenger of the day and he was ready to get home now that the sun was below the horizon. But that was everyone now that the world knew that vampires were real. I wasn’t particularly thrilled to be out walking around at night like I was a pizza on display, but I figured that if they wanted to snack on me, they could come in through my window with the broken latch at any time.

Before the boat reached the dock, the driver was handing me up onto the sidewalk, his coarse hand biting painfully into my elbow. The second my foot touched the pavement, he started reversing away. My balance wobbled and I reached out for the railing that ran along much of the sidewalk to catch myself before I tumbled backward into the canal. What I caught was a hand. A very strong, cold hand. I looked up to see who the hand was attached to and my heart skipped a beat.

Men were not supposed to be this attractive. He was impressively tall, looming over me with shoulders wide enough to blot out the sky. Straight, dark brown hair fell down across his forehead, threatening to obscure piercing gray eyes as they held mine for a split second. I wavered on the edge in surprise, once again threatening to fall backward into the frigid water that lapped against the island. He broke eye contact suddenly, tugging me more firmly onto the sidewalk and away from the threat of a dunking.

As I regained my footing, I pulled my hand free of the man’s, but there was a reluctance in his grip, as if he didn’t mean to immediately release me. Maybe he thought I was so clumsy that I was going to fall into the waters despite his firm assistance.

“
Grazie
,” I murmured, starting to backpedal away from him while keeping my eyes lowered to the ground. Something about his sharp gaze unnerved me. It was like ... I was afraid that if I met his eyes again, I wouldn’t be able to look away. Despite only getting a glimpse, I could clearly see the deep slate gray in my mind’s eye, as if it had been burned there by the intensity of his gaze.

The man said something in a rush of Italian that I didn’t understand, but his voice was hypnotic, a caress of all my senses. I shook my head to break free of the spell he was weaving.

“Sorry.
Americana
. I don’t speak much Italian,” I said, waving one hand at him with a weak smile. From my experience, most of the locals were happy to ignore you once they discovered that you didn’t speak the language — except for the vendors. If they thought you were going to buy something, they were a little more willing to try to communicate.

“
C’est bon
. I’m not Italian. I said I am sorry that the ferry driver was so careless that he nearly caused you harm,” the strange man translated. His accent surprised me, drawing my eyes back to his face when I had been trying to avoid it. He was French, but his accent was different from what I’d heard in Paris two months ago. He could have been from the south. It was one of the areas in France that I hadn’t spent much time in.

“No harm done. He’s like everyone else; anxious to be inside when the sun sets.”

The man smiled and that initial frisson of warning that had slipped through me at the first touch of his hand proved to be right. Sharp fangs poked down, pressing into his full lower lip. “And with very good reason,” he added.

“You’re a vampire,” I whispered in shock. A heartbeat later, my shoulders slumped. “And I’m dinner.”

“
Oui, mademoiselle.
But I promise, you will not remember a thing.”

His reassurance was of little help. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that being a meal for someone wasn’t something that I was likely to forget when a large raindrop splatted right across the vampire’s nose, causing him to jerk in surprise. A loud bark of laughter jumped from me and I clapped my hand over my mouth to stop any further noise. The vampire glowered down at me from his overwhelming height. I wasn’t quite sure if he was more perturbed by my laughter or the rain that was coming down in fat drops. When a second one landed across his smooth cheek, I didn’t bother to hide my laughter any longer, allowing it pour forth.

“I don’t see the humor,
mademoiselle
,” he said stiffly.

“It’s just been that kind of day. “ I giggled again as the rain immediately sped up so that thick sheets of it were now streaming down on us. I stared at the man, my flash of fear subsiding. He didn’t look as menacing now that his hair was flattened to his head and his designer shirt and pants were sticking to his frame. Hell, he looked pretty pathetic as he frowned up at the sky, maybe cursing God for making it rain when he obviously had other plans for the evening.

“Look, I would imagine that it’s going to be hard to find a meal since it’s supposed to rain all night. You’re not going to just let me go, are you?” I said, raising my voice over the pounding rain and the rumble of thunder.

“No.” His eyes narrowed on me, as if he were expecting me to wage this impressive fight for my freedom. Sadly, he didn’t look as intimidating as he should have with drops of rain hanging from the ends of his ridiculously long eyelashes and dripping from the tip of his straight aquiline nose.

“Well, then would you mind terribly if we did this in a somewhat drier location? I don’t know about you, but I don’t personally care to eat while being rained on.”

The vampire just stared at me. His mouth popped open and an utterly perplexed expression filled his lean, handsome face. But then, I didn’t imagine that his meal often bargained with him in such a way. He probably didn’t give them the chance. When he didn’t immediately respond and the cold had sunk through my sodden clothes to reach the very marrow of my bones, I threw up my hands in disgust and started to jog in the direction my apartment building. He’d either follow or he’d find someone else more appealing to dine on than the crazy
Americana
. I was exhausted, drenched, irritated, and frozen. I wasn’t going to wait on my would-be attacker to make up his mind.

The ancient palazzo I was staying in had been converted into several apartments and was less than two blocks away. It didn’t take long to cut over to it from where the ferry had dropped me. The pounding rain on the pavement and in the canal drowned out all other sound, including any other footsteps splashing along the wet pavement other than my own. I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder for my predator. Maybe he had moved on.

A sharp shaft of disappointment cut through me at the idea. It might have been nice to ask him a few questions, though he’d already said I wouldn’t remember anything. Did he mean I wasn’t going to survive? Or would he simply erase my memories? That’s what the vampires were always doing in movies.

As I crossed the last narrow bridge over a canal, I slipped on the wet stone pavement. A strong hand caught my elbow, helping me to keep my feet.

“You are not very steady,” the vampire observed drily, surprising me. I couldn’t imagine anyone moving with such stealth, but he had trailed me with the silence of a shadow.

I bit back an irritated retort about the rain and tried to pull my elbow free of his grasp, but he refused to release me until I was back on the sidewalk and away from the canal. All I could think was:
Don’t worry, buster. I won’t fall in the canal. I’ve already been lucky enough to win a date with your fangs.

But I kept my comments to myself as I struggled to dig into my jeans’ pocket and pull out my keys. The combination of the soaked fabric and my half-frozen fingers made it a fight, but I finally got them free and the door unlocked.

The vampire followed silently along, up the narrow stairs to the third floor. I paused long enough to wipe some of the water running down my face from my eyes before inserting the key into the lock. As I turned back after stepping across the threshold, a thought occurred to me: Could he enter without being invited? It was a favorite trope from all the old vampire legends. Yet as I looked at him, the tall vampire had already stepped into the apartment.

“Well, I guess that answers that question,” I muttered under my breath, shutting the door behind him.

A sinister grin slid across his lips. “You were hoping I couldn’t enter without your invitation? Was that your plan of escape?”

A little snort escaped me. “Actually, I didn’t think of it until just a second ago.”

“And if I couldn’t, would you have invited me in?”

I paused in the act of locking the door, my eyes focused on the deadbolt knob clenched between my thumb and my index finger. “Will you tell me the truth about something?”

“I will.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“No. There is no need.”

“Will it hurt?”

The vampire took a step, crowding close without actually touching me. “Would you like it to?”

A sound of disgust rose from my throat and I glared at the vampire over my shoulder for a second before pushing away from the door. Human or vampire, men were still all alike. My shoulder bumped him but it was enough to get him to step back so that I could walk past him. “I hope you don’t mind but your dinner would very much like to get dry and warm before you dig in.”

He said nothing, but I could feel his narrowed gray eyes trained on me as I moved about. The apartment had an open floor plan so that upon entering you could see the living room, the small dining room, and the even smaller kitchen. I peeled off my soggy shoes and socks as I crossed the room, my wet feet now slapping against the cold hardwood floor. At each of the three buckets placed under the leaks, I paused to check that they weren’t about to overflow.

“It’s raining in your home,” the vampire said with an air of confusion and wonder.

“No kidding.” I flipped over a small trash can, emptying wadded up paper and a couple protein bar wrappers onto the floor, before placing it under a new leak that had appeared with the storm. I started to head into the bedroom off the kitchen and stopped to look back at the vampire still standing near the door. “Do you ... I mean ... are you cold?”

“I don’t feel cold or hot like you do, but I cannot say that these wet clothes are comfortable,” he admitted. He held his arms out to side, raining drops of water onto the floor.

There was just something very stiff and proper about his tone that brought a smile to my lips. It was one of the few I’d had in a few days. My trip to Venice was not going well and I was already behind on the project I was supposed to be working on. But this vampire helped me forget, even if it was only for a few minutes.

With a shake of my head, I ducked into the bathroom and grabbed a pair of towels. Pressing one to my head, I threw the other one at the vampire. It was going to fall painfully short, but he moved with amazing speed, closing the distance so that he could easily catch the towel before it touched the floor. And still, he moved without a whisper of sound. I jerked, slamming my back into the doorjamb behind me, my heart pounding in my chest like it was attempting to break free and make a run for it. It was the first time I’d seen him do anything to make me think that he was something other than a cold, wet man.

The vampire lifted the towel and nodded once, “Thank you.” He didn’t take another step toward me but proceeded to rub the towel over his hair and face.

“No problem,” I whispered, drawing in a shaking breath to try to calm my beating heart. “I’ll see if I have anything that might fit you.”

My pulse slowed down again when I escaped to the bedroom. I started to shut the door, but stopped myself. I was his meal. He didn’t need to think that I was trying to escape. That didn’t strike me as a wise idea, particularly after how fast I’d seen him move already. So far, we were both being civil about this whole exchange and I was really hoping to keep it that way. I didn’t want to do anything that might convince him that he needed to become violent.

Alone in my room, I was once again aware of how cold I’d become. The wet clothes were stripped off as quickly as possible with trembling, numb fingers. I left them in a pile on the floor before digging a pair of panties and a bra out of the large travel bag shoved in one corner. I started to grab a pair of jeans, but paused. Jeans might look somewhat nice, but they’d be nowhere near as warm as the worn pair of purple cotton jogging pants I’d slept in the past three nights. With another sound of disgust, I dropped the jeans and quickly pulled on the jogging pants. I was dinner, not a date. He could probably care less what I looked like so long as my blood was warm.

“Hey!” I shouted as I dug for a heavy sweatshirt. “Is it bad etiquette for me to ask what your name is?”

“My name is Stefan.”